Various apparatuses and methods have been proposed for improving placement efficiency in placement apparatuses that place electronic components to circuit boards. (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 9-81603, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-209697, and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-2096829)
As high productivity in placement apparatuses is increasingly pursued, disparity between manufacturers is disappearing. Instead, productivity is greatly dependant on the degree to which waste can be eliminated in operation of equipment. In light of this, in addition to dividing components evenly between placement apparatuses and reducing waste between pieces of equipment, the importance of optimization software that ensures high productivity without waste in each individual apparatus has come to be recognized, and there are demands to perform placement of electronic components even more effectively.